


I'll Take Care of You

by lesbianettes



Series: Orestes and Pylades [1]
Category: Chicago Med
Genre: (ish?), F/F, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Oneshot, TB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 13:50:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20154637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianettes/pseuds/lesbianettes
Summary: April's in the hospital after a resurgence of her TB.





	I'll Take Care of You

**Author's Note:**

> This is a four part series in which every part is unrelated! Four different oneshots about four different ships based on the following quote:
> 
> "I'll take care of you."
> 
> "It's rotten work."
> 
> "Not to me. Not if it's you."

There’s nothing easy about this. About anything that’s happened over the course of the last year. Natalie’s been through so much, and a good portion of it with April at her side. She remembers, painfully, what it was like before. Mostly on her own, in a house full of memories and with the child of someone who would never come home to her. She spent a very long time wondering if she would be a good mother on her own. She spends so much time- many would say too much time- at work, and she was terrified of not being good enough.

But after Owen was born, and April started coming around more, things began to ease like they hadn’t since before Natalie married her late husband. She feels warm with April, with the mornings they share in bed and the evenings they cook together and the little moments caught in the hallways at med when no one is looking. They’ve found something good.

Or at least, it felt that way in the beginning. For the last couple weeks, everything’s been awful. It started with a lingering cough, one that had Natalie trying to get her to rest more, urging her to take her inhaler even if April rarely needs it anymore. Then it was the fever and April shivering under a layer of blankets, and then it was fainting outside a bar where no one would have found her if Noah hadn’t gone out to check on her.

Now, she stands here in the entryway of the hospital room April’s currently staying in, has been for the past couple days. Owen keeps asking for “Abel” because he can’t say April’s name yet, but she couldn’t bring him here. He’s too young. Natalie herself has to wear a mask over her face to protect her from the airborne disease every time April’s body shakes with a coughing fit that makes her monitors panic for a moment before they settle. It wasn’t supposed to get this bad. She had been doing so much better. But the disease resurged with a vengeance like Natalie’s never seen, not even in the ED. April’s lost weight, and she wheezes more now, but at least she’s here now. She’s being treated. 

“They finally let me bring flowers,” she says as cheerily as she can manage, bringing the vase forward to set on April’s nightstand. “Connor got his florist to give me the best in stock.”

It shows, all bright colors and vibrant petals, as lively as April used to be- and will be again, Natalie reminds herself. Right now, she’s getting the best treatment available. She’ll be alright. Before either of them knows it, April won’t need the extra oxygen flowing into her nose. The walks she takes around her room will turn to walks around the hall, and then she’ll be back home, pacing the house and watching television with Owen curled up against her side. And Natalie will cook for them and they’ll be happy. 

But that’s not right now. Not when April looks so frail and exhausted still, reaching weakly for Natalie’s hand as she sits at the foot of her bed. The mattresses here are thin; she knows they’re uncomfortable after only a couple hours, let alone what’s verging on a week.

“Owen misses you. Keeps asking for you to read him bedtime stories- he likes them better from you.”

April laughs, a little breathless but stronger than it has been. “You don’t do the voices right.”

“Because you won’t teach me!”

It’s easy, in that moment, to dissolve into laughter that rings louder, echoes off the tile floor and hard cabinets. Before April, Natalie hadn’t laughed like that since her husband’s death. Laughter feels nice, at ease, but here it’s out of place and she’s struck with the painful fear that maybe, she’s going to lose April too. Another funeral. Another mourning period that lasts longer than people think they should. Another ring she’ll eventually have to take off. Even thinking about it brings tears to her eyes.

Just as suddenly as they gather, a cold hand cups her jaw and April thumbs away a tear. The gesture is so familiar and comforting that it nearly inspires more sobs of a different kind. Instead, Natalie wraps a hand around her fiance's wrist to hold her there. More touch that she’s been starved of as lately. She needs it, even as she’s acutely aware that April is the one who needs taking care of now, not herself.

“They tell me I’m getting better,” April says. Her voice has gotten huskier as well as thinner, lately. “In another week, they’ll wanna send me home.”

And a thought like that feels like an oasis. April, home, alive, recovering. But for as many recoveries as Natalie sees, she sees twice as many sudden, deadly resurgences. It happened once before, and now they’re here, trying a new string of medication for drug resistant bacteria breeding in April’s lungs. She’s scared. She’s more scared than when Owen got sick for the first time because this isn’t something she can do anything about.

“I’m going to be okay,” April insists.

Natalie wants to believe her. She nods stiffly. 

“I’m serious. No way I’d leave Owen without anyone to tell him decent bedtime stories-”

It sounds like she has more to say, but she breaks off into a harsh bout of coughing that has Natalie scrambling to lift the straw to her water cup within reach, get her to drink once her chest stops spasming. Tacky blood smears a little around April’s lips, which Natalie is quick to wipe with a tissue as well. There are nurses to help when April is too weak to do this herself, but Natalie will do anything and everything she can to take care of her the way she failed to do soon enough to prevent this spiraling out of control. 

“Just breathe, baby,” Natalie says, which brings a smile back to April’s face after she drinks her water. As if it were so easy.

She does something everyone tells her not to, but she can’t resist, then; she wedges herself against April’s side and lays with her, rests her head against her chest and listens to the tell-tale rattle of each breath which marks time for someone to help drain the blood from her lungs again before she drowns in it. A painful death, Natalie can imagine. It’s not one she wants to see someone she loves so dearly suffer through. That would be harder than the cold letter she received in the mail about her husband’s death.

“If you’re up to it tomorrow, Owen would love a phone call from you. Just to know you’re still…”

Natalie can’t even finish the sentence. The reality of it is too painful. She doesn’t want to consider it. She doesn’t get to dwell, luckily, because as soon as she trails off, April reaches down to dig through her backpack for something which turns out to be a colorful children’s book. Dr. Seuss, more specifically, with a nonsense name and bright drawings and a well loved spine because it’s one April reads to Owen often.

“Could you record me reading this? For Owen?”

She nods quickly and fumbles for her phone as April cracks open the book and prepares to read the title, angling it toward the camera the way she does when she sits in front of Natalie and Owen, reading to them both as bedtime leeches in through the curtains of Owen’s room.

As Natalie presses record, April battles through one more coughing fit, and then she begins to read. Her voice isn’t as lively as it has been in the past, and she doesn’t give a different personality to every bit of dialogue she finds. It’s a bit more like the way Natalie tells stories; exhausted but overcome with love, and simply wanting to give something worthwhile to a child she loves with all of her heart, loves so much it makes her breathless.

She records, and she smiles, but the entire time, she’s only thinking about how much she wants April to come home and be herself as opposed to a sickly patient again.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @beelivia


End file.
